City Of Immigrants: An Introduction
Immigrant NYC is growing and with that growth comes a range of complex issues and vibrant communities.
For two months this fall, New Yorkers battled over Governor Elliot Spitzer’s plan to provide drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. The issue dominated headlines and airwaves across country. His adversaries accused the governor of neglecting homeland security and railroading the legislature. As Lou Dobbs used it to beat the anti-immigration war drum, Hillary Clinton tried to duck it on televised debates.
For all the ink spilled over the governor’s plan, its potential for creating economic opportunities for immigrants remained mostly out of the spotlight—though for many foreign-born New Yorkers this is the real crux of the matter.
“For immigrant New Yorkers whose lives were devastated because they could no longer drive to work… today is a day to celebrate,” said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of The New York Immigration Coalition, on the hopeful day in September when Governor Spitzer first announced the new licensing policy.
For undocumented immigrants, many of whom have limited education, the city seems to have an insatiable demand for low-income labor. But many factors limit how much immigrants earn, what kinds of jobs they get, and how employers treat them. For all the heated rhetoric, the controversy over Governor Spitzer’s plan barely scratched the surface of the systemic patterns of exploitation that shape the way many immigrants work and live in America’s largest city.
“I can’t hire the kid from the local high school to sweep up at the end of the day and pay him 2-3 bucks an hour for it. But I can pay two bucks an hour for the guy named ‘Jose,’” a Queens landlord who employs undocumented immigrants said.
New York City’s economy is propped-up by immigrant labor. Department of City Planning data show that immigrants make up 43 percent of the city’s labor force, a number nine times greater than the rate nationwide. A recent report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that foreign-born residents were responsible for a quarter of the state’s economy, or $229 billion, in 2006—more than the gross domestic product of 30 states.
Immigrants are a diverse group with varied skill sets and incomes. Many earn high wages in high-skill jobs. The Fiscal Policy Institute report shows that 55 percent of immigrant families earn between $20,000 and $80,000 a year, compared to 44 percent of native-born families. Nonetheless, many immigrants in New York City live in poverty. According to the Department of City Planning, 21.1 percent of all New Yorkers live below the poverty line, as compared to 30.9 percent of Dominicans, 31 percent of Bangladeshis, and 32 percent of Mexicans residing in the city.
AUDIO: Cindy Rodriguez, the vice president of tha National Assocation of Hispanic Journalists, speaks on the language of immigration.
By Koryn Kennedy
Many immigrants work in local service industries for long hours with low pay. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute report, 70 percent of New York City’s cooks and construction workers, and 90 percent of its taxi drivers, are foreign-born. As a whole, immigrants tend to work longer but earn less money than non-immigrants. With undocumented immigrants, these trends are even more pronounced.
Immigrants are a major part of New York City’s population as well as its economy. Around 70,000 immigrants arrive every year, Department of City Planning data shows. 2.87 million New Yorkers, or 36 percent of all residents, are foreign-born.Though a majority of immigrants in New York City are either naturalized or legal residents, the PEW Hispanic Center estimates that somewhere between 550,000 and 600,000 are undocumented.
AUDIO: New York commuters give their take on immigration.
By Koryn Kennedy and Chad Smith
In a recent study the Brennan Center for Social Justice explored New York City’s unregulated economy and the impact of undocumented immigrant labor. Many industries with predominantly immigrant labor survive on thin margins and pay low wages as a matter of necessity. But some high-end industries are as likely to use undocumented labor to increase profits. Additionally, researchers found that many prominent retailers, landlords, and hotels indirectly exploit undocumented labor by subcontracting with cut-rate firms for essential services—custodial, maintenance, or laundry, for example—which pay their workers low wages in substandard conditions.
What fuels this exploitation? The Brennan Center identified several complex and interdependent causes, such as the dysfunctional federal immigration policy that fails to restrict immigrants from entering but makes it illegal for them to be here. In particular, researchers found that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which prohibits employers from hiring undocumented immigrants, creates incentives for employers to pay their workers under the table.
Major historic trends in labor markets and politics also contribute to immigrant exploitation, the Brennan Center study demonstrates. An increasingly global economy has decreased the number of local industrial jobs while cheap overseas labor drives down profits.. As New York’s economy transformed from industrial to service-oriented, employers in tight markets are “investing less in the skills and long-term careers of their workers” and finding ways to stay in business—often by getting workers on the cheap. Deunionization and decreased federal and state enforcement of labor laws contribute to the trend.
With New York’s economy structured around technology and finance more than ever, wealth disparities have increased. According to the Brennan Center, a “growing class of high-income, professional workers creates demand for a range of services that are provided by a growing class of low-wage and immigrant workers.” The cycle is self-reinforcing: with greater wealth disparities and a larger working class, demand for cheap goods and services provided by exploited labor increases. Often, immigrant entrepreneurs who serve low-income immigrant consumers employ and exploit immigrant labor.
These factors serve as the background to perhaps the most prominent reason for immigrant exploitation: fear. Unscrupulous employers prey on the perpetual fear of discovery and deportation in which many undocumented immigrants live. “Fly-by-night” contractors—so called for vanishing before paying their employees—know non-citizens probably will not track them down. Employers may threaten to call immigration authorities if employees complain about wages or conditions. Some may perpetuate the misunderstanding that undocumented workers are not eligible for workers’ compensation, minimum wages, and the right to organize.
“Even though you’re here and you’re walking around free, you always have that fear that somebody’s going to find out and somehow you’ll be deported,” said Luis J., a construction day laborer who recently returned to his native country of Mexico after ten years in New York. “It never leaves, that fear.”
For a short time, immigrant New Yorkers thought they had a new protection from fear and exploitation. But everyday he stuck with his plan, Governor Spitzer’s popularity sank. Polls showed 7 of 10 New Yorkers opposed drivers’ licenses for immigrants.
“It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic,” Spitzer said after withdrawing the plan. “Immigration is the third rail of politics.”
Dealt a major blow, immigrant advocates in New York are looking to federal immigration reform to promote economic opportunity and decrease exploitation.
“For us to maximize immigrant contributions to the economy, we must stop treating immigrants like criminals and terrorists,” said the New York Immigration Coalition’s Chung-Wha Hong. “Instead, we need to change our immigration laws so that undocumented immigrants can come out of the shadows of the underground economy and future immigrant workers can immigrate legally to fill jobs that our economy requires.”